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Such mechanism would give the intervening forces independence and autonomy from richer countries that can use the power of the wallet to direct any matter into their interests.
An international court/tribunal should be empowered to try soldiers from any country who commit war crimes during HMI missions. Powerful countries manage to diplomatically arm twist international humanitarian law by signing agreements with some less powerful countries so that after a military intervention their servicemen are not arraigned before any local or international court of law to answer to crimes committed during service. The USA has signed treaties with countries like Afghanistan that make USA service personnel in those countries not to be subjected to the local laws when they commit crimes.
These laws, including the failure to ratify the Rome Statute are a clear sign that the USA views its personnel as unaccountable to International Law. This approach is immoral especially when weighed against the fact that it is Major Powers which push for the respect of global human rights.
There should be a well-defined End state to the mission of any HMI. For instance, when the international community agrees that there is a case that warrants intervention, prior to undertaking the intervention, intervening countries should state clearly what they aim to achieve. On the achievement of the targeted goals, the intervening forces should initiate the process of withdrawing troops. An intervention should never be an occupation. Furthermore, HMIs should restore normalcy in the country that has been intervened.
There should be an intervention template. An HMI template is a list of do’s and don’ts which service personnel should use. An HMI template will lay down rules on how the intervening forces would deal with both peaceful and hostile citizens of the subject country, how they would handle perpetrators of human rights violations and how they would deal with armed forces of the subject country and would also incorporate the End state. HMIs should not be used as regime change tools.
In summary, the concept of HMI is a noble ideal response to excesses by an abusive government on its citizens who cannot defend themselves. The concept can serve as the intervention of last resort given that HMI is not the only intervention mechanism that can be used by the international community to deal with excess cases of human rights violations (ICISS, 2001). Where there are cases of genocide, humanitarian intervention should be speeded up to stop the carnage by abusive governments without selectivity.
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However, as already noted, this concept of HMI has been used as a tool to camouflage national interest based invasions by powerful countries. From the consultations done by the researcher in books, articles and interactive as well as in-depth interviews, HMI is an ideal tool to control tyrant leaders, which is problematic in practice given that in most of the cases where the concept has been used as a pretext for intervention, the underlying motives have been national self-interests. The research established that self- interest has been the major influencing factor on the decision by the powerful countries to intervene in the affairs of weaker developing countries. Intervening countries have always turned a blind eye in most situations where human rights were trampled if they had no self-interests in those countries. The concept has been selectively applied in different countries. In most deserving countries like Rwanda, the powerful nations pretended as if the case did not deserve intervention.
Because of its inherent weakness to abuse, HMI is resisted by leaders of weaker developing countries.
Weaker countries argue that HMI is an immoral adventure that trumps on the ethic of respecting the sovereignty of other countries in the international system. The argument is premised on the selective application of HMI by powerful countries that have the capacity to intervene. The assertion is further supported by the argument that the human rights that the western world claims to be protecting on intervention are not constant but creations of western values. The notion of HMI has therefore remained a contested moral principle which without being regulated will continue to be a camouflage for national self-interest by the powerful countries in the weaker countries.
SECTION B: Recommendations for a Future Balanced Humanitarian Military Intervention
From the interview responses, it was established that while HMI is riddled with contentious issues, it is a necessary evil which should be evoked in some extreme cases when there is gross violations of human rights and when the genocide and war crimes are being committed. The thesis noted that even less powerful countries that quickly rush to invoke the concept of state sovereignty have in some cases accepted the need for HMI. The AU Constitutive Act accepted that while the continental body held up the concept of state sovereignty, that right will only be enjoyed by legitimate leaders and those committing gross human rights violations will be subject of HMI. Leaders of countries like Uganda and Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame, respectively, spoke on support of HMI mainly because their countries experienced mass atrocities perpetrated by the state.
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In light of all the observations and contributions from the research and interviews the study recommends the following:
• That the conduct of HMI should be regulated by the use of regional organisations and non- interested parties with the UN acting as the supreme regulator. Coupled with this should be the production of an agreed upon HMI template to regulate the conduct of the intervening countries and their service personnel in order to limit or curtail abuses of HMI. For HMI to have some ethical standing, the missions should not destroy more lives than those previously threatened and should leave the subject country in a better position than what is had been before the intervention. From this point of view it is recommended that the amount of force to be used and the nature of the weaponry should be regulated to limit civilian casualties as well as military personnel casualties of the intervening countries. After the mission the international community through the regional communities and the UN should work to rebuild the administrative as well as physical institutions for sustainable peace. The End-state of any HMI should be to restore peace and security in the country to its original form before the manifestations of compelling reasons for intervention or even better.
• The creation of an international HMI fund that will be accessed and used in HMI. This fund will help reduce the reliance only on powerful countries that have the financial capacity to undertake HMI. Hence, one can argue that the fund will liberate HMI from being an adventure of a few privileged powerful countries to being a genuine ethical practice that can be delegated even to service personnel from less powerful countries as is the case with UN peacekeeping missions.
This would be ideal to ensure that, those countries which harbour national self-interests are prohibited to intervene.
• Special training on the conduct of HMI to military as well as civilian personnel. This recommendation was influenced by the fact that in the conduct of HMI is different from conventional warfare. Hence, just as peacekeeping forces are given special training on their missions, there is also need to do the same for other personnel undertaking HMI.
• That the pursuit of national self-interest within the community of nations should be done only through the authorisation of the UN if it is to promote the interest of the whole nation state. This recommendation implies that regardless of how powerful a state is, HMI should be undertaken after authorisation. This is to ensure that states do not abuse or camouflage their national interest under the guise of HMI.
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• The establishment of rules and regulations that would also allow for the prosecution of personnel that perpetrate war crimes and human rights violations while conducting HMI.
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